Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed vetoed 13 Republican bills on Tuesday, including one that LGBTQ+ advocates say would have removed legal recognition of transgender people in the state.
Senate Bill 1628, also known as the “Arizona Women’s Bill of Rights,” was introduced by state Sen. Sine Kerr (R) in February. Similar to laws introduced in other states such as Indiana and Iowa, it would have replaced the word “gender” with the word “sex” in state law. The proposed law defined gendered terms based solely on biological sex and would have prohibited transgender people from single-sex environments like bathrooms, locker rooms, sports teams, and domestic violence shelters that do not match the sex they were assigned at birth.
Critics argued that the bill would have eliminated transgender and nonbinary individuals from public life in Arizona.
“This attempt to eliminate trans people and force them into categories that do not apply to them is completely unacceptable to me,” state Sen. Eva Burch (D) conveyed to the Arizona Senate Health and Human Services Committee in February. “I’m not afraid of trans people, I’m afraid of the consequences of continuing to treat them in this manner.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona’s Hugo Polanco cautioned that S.B. 1628 would have also barred transgender individuals from obtaining accurate gender identity on legal documents like IDs.
“This bill would compel transgender individuals to live a falsehood and expose them to potential harm by disclosing the sex assigned to them at birth on documents such as drivers’ licenses, marriage licenses, school records, and burial paperwork,” Polanco stated in February. “All of us, including transgender individuals, require accurate and consistent identity documents that reflect our true selves. That’s what IDs are for.”
The bill was approved by Arizona’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives in a 31–28 vote along party lines earlier this month, as reported by KJZZ. It was then submitted to Hobbs, who had previously expressed opposition to it.
“As I have stated repeatedly, I will not approve legislation that targets Arizonans,” Hobbs stated in a message regarding her veto of SB 1628 earlier this week.
This is not the first time Hobbs has vetoed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. In April 2023, she vetoed S.B. 1005, which aimed to enable parents to sue school districts for implementing LGBTQ+ supportive policies. In May 2023, she vetoed S.B. 1001, which proposed mandating trans and nonbinary students to obtain written parental consent to use pronouns and names aligning with their gender identity. Last June, she vetoed two anti-LGBTQ+ bills, one that would have prohibited trans students from accessing the appropriate locker rooms and restrooms at school, and another that she characterized as “a thinly veiled effort to ban books.”
In June 2023, she also issued two executive orders permitting state employee health insurance plans to cover gender-affirming surgery and prohibiting state agencies from endorsing or funding so-called “conversion therapy.”
